Silver Lining
by Knowing Shadows
Summary: AU. Cloud fails to throw Sephiroth into the Mako reactor in Nibelheim, and Hojo ends up with 3 test subjects. That is, until Zack breaks them all out.  Yaoi, Sephiroth/Zack/Cloud
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello! You may have seen this uploaded onto my lj, but I thought I would also upload it here for anyone else who wants to read this :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, and make no profit from this fanwork.

* * *

><p>(1. Escape)<p>

1.1

Zack woke up to screaming.

He didn't realise that that was what had roused him at first. Regaining consciousness was like trying to swim up through cotton, all his senses dulled and useless. He was aware that he didn't feel good. He ached, and nausea was crawling up from his stomach to lie thick in the back of his throat. His skin burned all over, a low-level pain so familiar by then that it barely registered.

His eyes slit open to a field of green. Mako solution, his brain knew it immediately, but it was another minute or so before it really sank in - he was back in his Mako tank.

Relief rushed over him in a wave. If he was back in his tank, it meant his session was done. Probably had been for a while, since he was waking up. Shiva, what had the professor pumped into him this time? He felt like he'd been chewed over by an angry Zolom. But no matter, the only important thing was that it was over -

A scream suddenly rent the air, high and shrieking like some kind of animal.

Zack started, head snapping towards the sound. His heart constricted in his chest. Zack's session in the laboratory might have finished, but Cloud's was another matter entirely.

There was movement in the Mako tank opposite Zack's. With trepidation he turned his head towards it and watched as Cloud's distress began to stir Sephiroth from his drugged slumber.

* * *

><p>1.2<p>

"He grows more disappointing by the day," Hojo sneered, lip curling. In front of him, Cloud sat slumped in an examination chair with his head lolling forward against his chest. His wrists were strapped to the arms of his seat.

Zack felt his own lip begin to curl. The straps were a pointless cruelty. Like Cloud was in any state to run off on his own.

"And to think he had so much potential." Hojo sighed and reached up with one hand to push his glasses up his nose. "Whoever thought a failure like him would bring down the Great Sephiroth..." He turned to the Mako tank to his left and peered up at its occupant. "...right, my boy?"

Sephiroth, long hair fanned out behind him in the Mako in a curtain of green-tinged silver, responded by baring his teeth at the scientist.

Hojo snorted. "And yet none could be more disappointing than you." He and Sephiroth eyed each other for a moment more, disgust clear on both of their faces. To be fair, Sephiroth's expression was more than that - to Zack it looked like the older man wanted nothing more than to be wrapping his hands around the professor's throat and squeezing.

Hojo turned away and motioned with one hand. One of his assistants appeared out of nowhere and rushed to him, clipboard in hand, nodding like an eager dog as Hojo said, "Put Specimen B back in his tank once he's finished purging his system. I want to increase the concentration in his solution by 2% tomorrow, so make sure everything is prepared by then."

"And the others, sir?" the woman asked, glancing between Zack and Sephiroth.

"Leave them for now," Hojo said dismissively. "Sephiroth's on his detox cycle, anyway."

After Hojo left, the assistant looked at Cloud with distaste. The blond was beginning to shake, barely noticeable now but Zack knew it would only get worse. Even as he watched, Cloud's body was racked by a particularly strong shudder and he lurched forward, making a heaving sound. His arms strained against their straps.

Zack raised a fist and pounded it on the glass, startling the woman. Sephiroth's head also turned in his direction. "Hey!" he cried. "Aren't you going to help him?"

The assistant glanced at him but didn't move from her post near the door. "My instructions were merely to put him back in his tank once he was done," she said coolly. Zack swore and slammed his other fist into the glass.

In the middle of the room, Cloud's tremors grew stronger. He shook and groaned and coughed like he was trying to vomit out his own lungs. Nothing came up except for bright green bile, dribbling down across his own lap because he was too addled by Mako to think to lean over the side.

"You're a fucking animal," Zack spat. "How can you look at him and do nothing?"

She refused to acknowledge him, but he saw her glance warily at Sephiroth. The other man was watching her from his tank with an expression no less contemptuous than the one he'd directed at Hojo earlier.

His watchful silence was worrying, but as long as Sephiroth's ire was reserved for Hojo and his minions then Zack would take whatever he could get.

* * *

><p>1.3<p>

Sephiroth was...unpredictable. He was kept sedated much of the time and was very rarely let out of his Mako tube. In the first year of their captivity Hojo had experimented on him almost exclusively, but he was strong and volatile and after he'd proved himself capable of breaking free of his restraints and killed one of Hojo's scientists, he'd been mostly left alone. Hojo didn't seem to know what to do with him anymore.

So he'd turned his attentions to Zack and Cloud instead.

"Cloud?" Zack called. He was pressed up against the glass, peering through into the tank next to his. Cloud hung limp in the Mako, unresponsive. Strangely, he looked better in his tank than out of it - through the green of the solution you couldn't see the bruises Zack knew to litter the younger man's skin, leaving only the worst signs of his torture visible. "Cloud," he tried again, but there wasn't even a twitch in response.

Zack closed his eyes in despair, letting his forehead thunk forward against the glass.

"It's Mako addiction," Sephiroth's deep voice came from across the room.

He looked up at the other man. Sephiroth gazed back at him calmly. He seemed well enough, but he'd fooled them all before.

"You seen this before?" Zack asked, jerking his head in Cloud's direction.

Sephiroth's feline eyes followed the movement to the other tank. His features appeared to soften somewhat, sympathy bleeding into his expression. It was that that reassured Zack that his former General had woken up on the saner end of the scale that day - Sephiroth seemed to regard him and Cloud differently to everyone else even on his bad days, but sympathy never entered into it. "I've seen it a few times," the man admitted, "in SOLDIER candidates who couldn't handle the Mako treatments."

"Did they survive?"

The look Sephiroth gave him was cool. "Such candidates fell under Hojo's jurisdiction," he answered.

Zack scrubbed at his face tiredly, trying not to think about it. He turned back to Cloud's tank. His eyes focused on the words the blond had scratched faintly onto the inside of his tank, before he'd begun to succumb to the Mako. 'Let's get out of here.'

They were losing Cloud. Every day he slipped further and further away from them. Zack couldn't even remember the last time he'd heard the kid string a coherent sentence together.

They had to do something. He just didn't know what.

* * *

><p>1.4<p>

Whatever results Hojo had expected from increasing the concentration of Mako in Cloud's tank did not materialise.

"Useless, useless!" the professor ranted angrily, bent over a machine that was spewing out a long roll of paper. Zack couldn't see what was on it, but Hojo's displeasure was telling enough.

"You really think putting him in more Mako is going to do him any good?" Sephiroth said scathingly.

"I didn't ask for your opinion," Hojo spat.

Zack tried to catch Sephiroth's eye across the room to get him to shut up. It would do none of them good if Hojo was pissed off.

The other man was too busy frowning at Hojo's back to pay attention to him, but luckily he held his tongue after that.

With a frustrated sound Hojo ripped the paper from the machine, scowling at it. "Four years! Four /years/ and nothing to show for it! Even the survivors from the fire have been nothing but failures..." He began to wander out of the room, muttering angrily to himself. He slammed the door behind him at he left.

Sephiroth continued to gaze in the direction of Hojo's retreat, face unreadable. Zack sighed and turned his head to the neighbouring tank. Cloud's eyes were open but unseeing.

He had to be starving. The poor kid had been unable to chew or swallow the food he'd been given yesterday and the assistant had lost patience with him quickly, storming out of the room with his tray still full.

He wasn't going to make it like this. He might finally succumb to the Mako, or Hojo might go a little too far one day, or it might just be neglect if the assistants couldn't be bothered to even feed him - but whichever it was, Cloud wasn't going to last much longer.

"We have to get out of here," Zack said.

"Yes, we do." Sephiroth sounded strangely calm, even as he continued, "Hojo is going to kill us soon."

Zack's eyes widened. "What - how can you know that?" Where had that come from? Sephiroth /had/ been surprisingly lucid ever since he'd woken a few days ago and it never normally lasted so long. Zack had been waiting for the tide to turn. Maybe this was it.

But there was none of the blank darkness in his face that usually accompanied those episodes. He hadn't mentioned the word 'mother' once.

"He is losing patience with us," Sephiroth explained. He finally moved his sharp gaze from the door to Cloud's tank, and even through Mako and glass Zack could see the odd way his expression softened again. "You and I have already proved ourselves worthless in his eyes, but Cloud at least showed promise. Now his body is failing and is no longer yielding the results Hojo wants. We three no longer do anything but waste Hojo's time and Shinra's money. What do you think he does with experiments that are no longer valid?"

"But to kill us - " Zack protested.

"You think he will let us free?" Sephiroth scoffed. "Me? Or you two, who not only witnessed what I did to this town but have been held against your will and near-tortured for the last /four/ years?"

No, of course not.

"He will terminate us," Sephiroth went on. "I've seen him do it before. He may need permission from the President, but that is all that stands in his way."

Everything suddenly felt very heavy and close around him. Zack tried to think but something very close to panic was pressing on his brain. "Then we have to get out," he said. But how? Cloud couldn't walk, he'd have to be carried, and he couldn't leave Sephiroth here - he was dangerous, but he was Zack's friend and he couldn't leave the man behind if he knew that death was what he was leaving him to.

...Even if there was nothing to guarantee that Sephiroth wouldn't suddenly wake up one morning and decide to kill them both.

And where would they go? Shinra owned most of the known world. The only place it hadn't managed to completely sink its claws into was Wutai, but that was equally dangerous. One sighting of Sephiroth and the natives would stop at nothing to tear them all apart.

But it wasn't like he had a choice, really. As that realisation sank in he began to calm. They risked death whether they tried to escape or not, and Zack had never been the kind of person to sit back and do nothing.

* * *

><p>1.5<p>

They had two major advantages when it came to escaping, as far as Zack could see.

One - Zack was physically much stronger than Hojo and his lackeys. He was out of practice but had spent much of the last years being pumped full of Mako, which accorded its own advantages. He could easily fight his way out of the labs, even on his own. Having to carry Cloud would slow them down but Zack was confident he could still manage long distances without tiring, even with the extra weight.

Two - they had Sephiroth. The man was in an entire league of his own when it came to fighting. There was no-one in the known world who could take Sephiroth down when he was in his right mind, and even when he wasn't it was a near impossible task. Recently, even in his agitated states the older man had appeared to show some kind of attachment to he and Cloud. If they had Sephiroth on their side then nothing would stand between them and the outside world.

They just had to get out of the tanks first.

'Feeding time,' Zack scratched laboriously onto the side of his tank, the letters jagged and back-to-front just in case Cloud somehow woke to read them.

Sephiroth was watching him as he wrote. The man had a particularly singular gaze and it rested like a brand across Zack's back. He tried to ignore it, focusing on the words in front of him, or every so often lifting his eyes to where Cloud continued to hang like a ragdoll, unseeing and unaware.

'I'll get you out,' Zack thought, determination wedging in his chest and throat and pricking behind his eyes. 'I will, I promise. Trust me.'

The door to the lab opened not long after and one of the nameless minions stepped in. (Nameless, but not faceless - Zack would remember each of their faces for as long as he lived, burned into the back of his mind in the special place he reserved for hating people like Hojo.) They barely glanced in Zack's direction, but Sephiroth's scrutiny made them pause - awake, for Sephiroth, meant 'dangerous,' and the assistants were understandably wary.

It was Sephiroth's tank that the minion approached. Or rather, the bank of machines that sat near it. Sephiroth didn't take his eyes off of the man for a second - didn't even seem to blink - and after a moment of dials and knobs being silently turned, he seemed to realise what was going on. His lip curled in disgust. "Putting me to sleep again, are we?" he asked of the assistant's back, derisive. As if he couldn't believe the audacity of it.

The assistant hunched his shoulders, refusing to be drawn into conversation as he adjusted the level of the various chemicals. Zack kind of admired his balls. Even trapped in an experimental Mako tank, half-naked and half-mad, Sephiroth wasn't the kind of man you could just ignore.

Nevertheless that was what the lackey did, and within minutes Sephiroth's eyelids began to droop. Just before he succumbed completely to the sedatives, Sephiroth met his gaze across the room. Zack nodded slowly and clearly, and watched as the older man's eyes finally slipped shut.

* * *

><p>1.6<p>

Their food came right on time. Zack watched the assistant come in, balancing a tray on one arm, and felt his heartbeat begin to pick up. Adrenaline spiked through him and suddenly all the low-level, constant aches and pains in his body faded away to nothing.

Zack knew the routine like the back of his hand. He tracked the man across the room as he went to the bank of dials next to Sephiroth's tank. The older SOLDIER was normally given nutrients through an IV rather than risk feeding him the normal way. Once that was done, the assistant would come to Zack and Cloud and start draining their Mako. Then he would open Zack's tank and give him his food.

Zack had never given them any trouble. He'd understood what might happen to himself - or Cloud - if he was uncooperative. He knew that he was considered 'safe' by the scientists, and so he knew, as the Mako drained around him and the door was opened, that the assistant hadn't been expecting the punch in the face at all.

The man crumpled to the ground almost silently, nose almost certainly broken. Zack scrambled out of the last of the Mako and out of the tank and cared about the blood beginning to run down the assistant's cheeks only as an indicator that he wasn't going to get up anytime soon.

For a moment Zack stood there, frozen, heart pounding in his throat and his mind blank. He was out, he was free, but there was no time - he moved for Sephiroth's tank and stumbled, legs wobbling beneath him. The world tilted crazily around him and then righted itself again. After a moment of panic he made it the short distance and began to punch the buttons he'd watched the scientists push a hundred times before. There was a hiss and then the Mako solution began to empty away.

It felt like an eternity before the level had dropped low enough to open the tank. Zack reached for the release button - and stopped, fingers curling back into his palm. He stared at Sephiroth as the man's body sank to the bottom of the tank, slumping awkwardly against the glass. What if this was a huge mistake? What if he should just grab Cloud and run for it? Something wasn't right with Sephiroth, and if he turned on them then Zack didn't think he could stop him -

- but Sephiroth had been so very lucid these past few days, had looked at Cloud's broken body with such emotion, and hated Hojo /so much/ -

- and Hojo would surely kill him if he remained here.

He hit the button. With another hiss of air, the tank sprang open. Ears straining for any sound outside the lab, Zack reached in and pulled the IV line out of the back of Sephiroth's hand. "Sephiroth," he hissed, shaking the man's arm. It hung limp in his grip. Blood was welling up from the needle-puncture and beginning to drip red down his white fingers. "General, wake up, we need to get out of here!"

Sephiroth didn't even stir. His face remained slack, eyes closed. Zack had no idea what drugs they used on the other man but they had to be strong to knock out a SOLDIER First. He could only hope a SOLDIER First system would also burn them off quickly. "Goddamn it, wake up!" he cried, grabbing Sephiroth by the shoulder and shaking him as hard as he could.

Sephiroth's eyes snapped open. For a second he looked confused. "General - " Zack began - but got no further, as Sephiroth's arm suddenly shot out and his fingers closed around his throat. Zack gagged, eyes wide, and the other man uncurled from the floor and stepped out into the room without letting go of him. He raised his arm and lifted Zack's feet from the floor like he weighed nothing.

"Traitor," Sephiroth hissed, thin lips drawing back in a snarl. His slit pupils were contracted so thinly they were barely visible.

/No, no, oh no not now, not now, why - /

Zack tried to gasp but it was impossible to draw in the air. He scrabbled desperately at Sephiroth's arm but the Mako residue left on the both of them meant he couldn't get a firm grip, fingers slipping and sliding and unable to find purchase. He couldn't breathe, his chest burned with it, heart beginning to pound so hard he thought it might burst.

Sephiroth merely watched him as he struggled, no recognition in his face at all. His fingers tightened beneath Zack's jaw, and Shiva he was going to die, Sephiroth was going to break his neck, snap it like a dry twig, and Cloud - oh gods /Cloud/ -

The blood rushing in Zack's ears was so loud he almost missed the sound. Something /whined/ like a beaten dog behind him and Sephiroth's gaze flickered towards the noise, grip loosening just for a second. Zack reacted on instinct; with a grunt of effort he brought his flailing legs up and /kicked/.

He must have caught Sephiroth in the knee or something. The other man abruptly staggered to the side as one leg crumpled beneath him, and Zack's other foot found purchase against his stomach. He kicked again with all his might and Sephiroth's fingers slipped from his throat.

He hit the floor with a gasp. His shoulder bore the brunt of the impact and the shock of the pain as it lanced through him made his eyes roll up into his head for a second. He was well-trained, though, and his body was struggling to get upright even as his head continued to spin. His throat hurt as he gulped in air.

When the world righted itself, Zack was on his feet between Cloud's tank and Sephiroth. He was desperate to look around and see if Cloud was okay - had /Cloud/ been the one to make that noise? It had to have been him - but he didn't dare take his eyes from Sephiroth, even for a second.

The General was sitting on the floor. As Zack watched, he raised a hand slowly to his temple and drew them away red. He stared at his stained fingers like he'd never seen blood before. Then he turned his head to Zack, looking dazed. "Zack," he said. "I - what..."

He must have hit his head on something when Zack kicked him. It looked like it had knocked Sephiroth right out of his little episode, but Zack couldn't afford to be complacent. "We don't have the time," he said. It hurt to talk and his voice came out scratchy and low. It sounded so unlike him that even Sephiroth seemed startled. "We need to get out of here now. Can you stand?"

The older man nodded and began to clamber to his feet, a little unsteady. As he did so, Zack backed up towards Cloud's tank and reached for the door release. He was about to turn to pull Cloud out when Sephiroth made a hesitant step towards them, blood dripping sluggishly down the side of his face.

"No," Zack hissed. Amazingly, Sephiroth stopped. "No, you just tried to strangle me. You're not coming near Cloud."

"I - " Sephiroth said.

"No!" He realised, dimly, that he was attempting to shield Cloud entirely from view with his body, like Sephiroth would forget he was there if he couldn't see him. "We don't have time, we could be discovered any minute. If you want to be useful, go out and find clothes and weapons. Clear the way out for us. But you don't come near him."

For a second Sephiroth's face was as open as Zack had ever seen it, confusion warring with something like hurt. It was enough to make Zack's heart twist with guilt, but then the shutters came down and the older man's face became as blank as stone. Without a word, he walked past Zack and out of the lab. The door shut quietly behind him.

Zack let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, and turned to Cloud's tank. With some effort he managed to pull Cloud's lifeless body into his arms. His hair and skin was thick with Mako and the higher concentration tingled unpleasantly wherever it touched Zack's skin.

It didn't stop him from nuzzling Cloud's temple, hot tears beginning to spill down his cheeks. He could no more have stopped them than he could stop his heart beating. "Come on," Zack whispered hoarsely in the blond's ear. "Let's get you out of here."

The tears wouldn't stop. He didn't know if it was stress, or adrenaline, or even joy at finally being free of the tanks.

He could only pray that Sephiroth kept it together long enough to let them out alive.

* * *

><p>End Chapter 1.<p>

A/N: Thanks for reading! All comments appreciated :)


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor am I making any profit from this fanwork.

* * *

><p>2. (Flight)<p>

2.1

The laboratory door led out into a dark, rough-hewn stone-and-earth tunnel. Zack stood there in the doorway for a moment, struck by the sight of it. Intellectually he'd known that they were in the basement of the ShinRa Mansion but it was still strange to finally see it with his own eyes.

The one-room laboratory had been their entire universe for the past four years. In his head it had become a place totally disconnected from the outside; a hundred square-metre world of nightmare. It wasn't until that moment, faced with the brown-stone walls and the distantly illuminated stairs leading up to the surface, that Zack realised how much he'd become convinced that the last four years had been either a concoction of his own mind, or hell.

The way was clear. The tunnel was silent and still as the grave. Where Sephiroth had disappeared to Zack had no clue, but as long as nothing stood in his path between here and freedom, he didn't very much care. He'd save that for later.

He hoisted Cloud's body higher up on his shoulder. The blond let out a miserable groan at his roughness but then fell quiet, and with a fortifying breath Zack stepped out into the tunnel. The stone was cool and damp and solid against his bare feet as he padded across it.

Halfway to the stairs they passed a greyish lump of flesh half-hidden in the shadows. It took Zack a second to work out what it was - an arm, torn straight from the shoulder. Not human, thank Shiva. Too big to be human, and the finger-shaped appendages curling into the palm looked like they'd been crafted by someone who might have seen a man once, a long time ago, and decided to recreate their memory clumsily out of clay. It was spotted and streaked with purple blood.

Zack wondered where the rest of the monster was, and wasn't sure whether he hoped this was Sephiroth's work or not.

At the bottom of the spiral stairs they paused again. Zack strained his ears but he couldn't hear anything, and when he took a quick look he couldn't see anything waiting for them on the way up, either. Either they were _very_ lucky, or Sephiroth was doing as he was told.

With Cloud's weight it took a little longer to climb the stairs, and more than once the combination of damp, chilled wood and bare feet found Zack scrabbling for purchase, but soon enough they made it to the top. The secret entrance had been forced and was stuck half-open. Again he paused behind the door to listen and again there was nothing.

He could see sunlight. A low evening light streamed in through the windows and it was that more than anything that drew Zack out into the mansion. He stood in the middle of the empty room in a patch of it, turning so that it fell across his back and Cloud's cheek.

"Almost there," he whispered, patting the back of Cloud's thigh.

The mansion was pretty much as he remembered it. He was surprised that there'd been no damage from the fire, but four years would have been more than enough time to repair any if there had been. And it remained silent and empty - even the main hall, with its high ceiling and sweeping staircases, yielded no enemies hidden away.

Near the front doors, however, lay the very dead body of one of Hojo's lackeys, their clothes spattered dark with blood. As Zack pushed through the door and into the outside air, he realised it was the woman who'd stood and watched Cloud vomiting into his own lap.

_Did she just happen to be there, or did Sephiroth go looking for her?_ Zack thought, but then the first fresh breeze he'd felt in years brushed against his skin and he turned to look out into the world that had left them behind…

…to a village that looked exactly the same as it did in his memories - just not the memories where it had been on fire.

* * *

><p>2.2<p>

Zack snuck toward the entrance to the village through the small dark spaces behind the houses, ducked so low that Cloud's feet kept brushing the ground.

If the underground tunnel had been a splash of reality, then this was like being shoved headfirst back into the dream. It felt like the houses themselves were watching him as he moved. His fingers curled fear-tight into the slick wet fabric of Cloud's trousers.

_Nibelheim shouldn't _exist _anymore. What the hell is going on?_

He'd spotted three people crossing the square as he moved from shadow to shadow and none of them he recognised. Nibelheim was such a tiny place that he'd met the entire population within half an hour of arriving, and he was positive that none of those three had been among them. Nibelheim wasn't exactly the kind of town people were queueing up to move to, either.

Even stranger had been the glimpse he'd got of a black-cloaked figure collapsed beside the well. They were in an obviously bad way, visibly shaking. A man had hurried past them without stopping, eyes barely more than flickering in its direction.

He didn't have time to stop and investigate. He moved on, but just as they were about to pass behind another house, he thought he saw the figure's head lift in their direction out of the corner of his eye.

He didn't look back to check. Heart pounding against his ribs, mind whirring - _Was it a ShinRa spy? A monster? Some kind of guard?_ - he made it quickly to the last building before the town entrance. He hesitated there behind the inn, fear tight in his chest and stomach. There was nothing between them and the gate, but the thing by the well might see them, and what if it _was_ something of ShinRa's?

He remembered the jerk of its head from the corner of his vision. If it _was_ ShinRa, then it had probably already seen them.

He took one last fortifying breath, gripped the back of Cloud's legs, and ran - out past the gate, past the rusting old truck, beyond where the stone path ended and the grass began, out into the green open plain with the wide sky burning yellow and gold above them.

* * *

><p>2.3<p>

Zack jogged for some time. He jogged until it was dark and only the moon lit their way, not really sure where he was going but feeling better for every metre he put between them and that godforsaken village.

He only slowed when Cloud began to moan miserably in pain over his shoulder. Zack could feel the blond's stomach muscles start to contract spasmodically so he stopped, managing to get Cloud on his knees and his head lowered just as he began to retch.

"Sorry," Zack murmured, rubbing up and down Cloud's back as he vomited thin, stringy green bile onto the ground. "Can't be comfortable up there for you while I'm running, can it. I promise it won't be for long. I just want to get a bit further and then we can stop."

Cloud continued to look pale and unwell even after he finished being sick, so Zack was forced to walk after that, trying to keep the blond as steady as possible. He trudged through the dark for Shiva-knew-how-long, until his eyelids were beginning to slip shut of their own accord, exhaustion creeping up on him in a dense fog.

He kept going for another half-hour or so even after that, afraid of being followed even though there'd been no sign of search parties at all since they'd escaped. Even the wild animals one would normally see roaming the fields were curiously absent.

Sephiroth, too, was nowhere to be seen.

Eventually, however, they hit gold - a river, hidden from view by a sharp drop in the ground. Nearby stood some rocks and trees, enough to hide them well enough for a few hours while they rested. Zack sank down by the water and lay Cloud on the soft mud beside him.

The water was cool and fresh. He drank and washed his face and then gently ran wet palms over Cloud's face to get some Mako off of him. He hoped it felt good for Cloud, if he could feel what Zack was doing at all. He smoothed blond hair going stiff with Mako back from Cloud's face and lifted his head to trickle water into his mouth. Encouragingly, the blond swallowed it down without too much trouble. He probably had less trouble than Zack, whose throat felt scratchy and swollen where Sephiroth had gone for him in the lab. When he ran his fingers lightly under his chin it hurt like fire.

It was too dark to check now, but Zack had no doubt he was one huge bruise from chin to clavicle. It took a lot to do that to a SOLDIER. If it had been Cloud the man had gone for…

It didn't bear thinking about. Zack grit his teeth and continued to rub the drying Mako from Cloud's skin wherever it was exposed. They had no clean outfits so they'd have to sleep in their stiff-drying lab clothes - a full bath would have to wait until tomorrow.

When they were both as clean as possible, Zack picked his companion up in his arms and carried him a little distance to where there was a space hidden away between rocks, trees and the high rise of earth. He lay them down on the grass with Cloud wedged between his body and some rocks. Anyone who found them would spot Zack before anything else, if they saw Cloud at all.

He lay on his back and listened to the silence, staring up at the stars. He supposed he was supposed to feel happy, relieved, _anything_ - and he did feel _something_, but it felt like whatever it was was so big that it had overloaded his nerves and he couldn't make sense of it. Every time he breathed in he could feel it pressing up hard against his sternum, barely contained behind his ribs, on the verge of cracking his chest right open.

_I need to rest,_ Zack thought, but it was a long time before his heart calmed enough to let him sleep.

* * *

><p>2.4<p>

Zack dreamt that he was back in the laboratory. He knew it was a dream because he could see himself, on his back on the examination table in the centre of the room. He'd been sliced and laid open like in an autopsy, but he was still awake. He could see his own heart beating wet and frantic where it was exposed to the open air.

Cloud lay in a heap on the floor next to the table. A pool of blood - mixed red and green - was slowly spreading around him. It had already spread far enough to reach Sephiroth's knees where he was kneeling next to the body.

"No," Sephiroth said. His head was bowed, the ends of his hair dyed red where they trailed against the floor. "No, he's dead, he's dead." His voice was like gravel, sounded like it physically hurt to talk. As Zack watched detachedly, the older man reached out and ran gentle fingertips down Cloud's still face. A moan choked out from his lips.

Hojo stepped out of the shadows. "You know who killed him, don't you?" he said, and Sephiroth shook his head. "Fair did."

Several things happened at once. Sephiroth leapt to his feet like he'd been shocked with lightning, and suddenly Zack was no longer an observer but he _was_ the body on the table - there was barely enough time to register the indescribable agony before Sephiroth was there, reaching between his lungs, face twisted like a wild animal -

Above the din he heard Hojo say, "Your mother would be proud."

He jerked awake just as Sephiroth wrenched his heart right out, panting. For a few seconds he lay unseeing, body clenched tight as his brain began to remember that he wasn't actually missing anything vital.

Cloud made a soft noise. Zack started, coming back to himself, and realised that he was wrapped tight around the blond, squeezing the younger man in his arms. He'd rolled them in the night until Cloud's face was almost mashed up against the sheltering rocks.

The fact that they were still where they'd gone to sleep was heartening. With a sigh Zack eased away onto his back, squinting up at the bright sky. From the sun he'd guess it was late morning at the very earliest. They'd slept for hours.

"Time to rise and shine, I guess," he said to Cloud as he sat up. He squeezed the other man's shoulder gently, but got no response. He wasn't sure that he'd been expecting anything anyway, but that didn't stop the bitter swell of disappointment that welled up in his belly. "Nah," he murmured, mouth twisting, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't wanna get up, either."

It was only then, when he turned his head away, that he noticed the clean clothes sitting in a neat pile next to them. Next to that lay his Buster Sword.

After a second of blank surprise, Zack quickly got to his feet and peered around. Everything was quiet except for the soft background noise of the river and a few birds chirping in the trees nearby. There was no sign of movement, nor any signs to say anyone had been there except for the fact that someone obviously _had_.

It could only have been Sephiroth, who had come and then gone again for whatever reason. Zack stared at the pile for another second. He hadn't even been aware that the other man had been tracking them.

_Well_, he mused after a moment, _at least he didn't murder us all horribly while we were asleep_. _That's always a plus_.

Warily, Zack picked Cloud up and took him and their new supplies down to the river. Keeping an eye on the Buster Sword nearby, Zack quickly stripped both himself and Cloud naked.

In the daylight and out of the Mako, the damage done to the blond's body was starkly visible. Zack sucked in a breath and did his best to ignore the extensive bruising mottling Cloud's white skin, the wiry Mako-born muscle the only thing stopping him looking like an emaciated doll - but even through that, it was still possible to pick out individual ribs beneath the skin. His body was littered with scars, some almost invisible at first glance but others ugly and angry-looking. The most obvious was a long, red mass of tissue along the blond's sternum that would likely never fade.

Zack hadn't seen himself in a mirror for years, but he supposed he didn't look much better.

He sat them both down in a shallow part of the river, hissing. Cloud jerked against his chest, but it seemed to be no more than an automatic muscle response to the sudden cold. "Sssssh, it's okay, we won't even feel it in a minute," Zack murmured. Then, shivering, he set about washing them both off.

It became impossible to ignore the injuries when he was running his hands over them. Pouring water over Cloud's head, picking apart dried-together strands of hair with his fingers, he found a shaved patch of scalp littered with surgical stitches half-hidden amongst the unruly blond spikes. Cloud's entire body shuddered when he gently touched the area.

The helpless anger and sorrow that had lain low in his belly seem to surge again until it filled his throat. Zack had to close his eyes, biting his lip as he held Cloud close. He buried his face in the blond's hair and struggled to breathe.

How the hell was he going to fix this? What on Gaia were they meant to do now?

He looked up, meaning to blink his eyes clear - and spotted Sephiroth standing on the rise nearby, three dead rabbits held in one hand.

* * *

><p>2.5<p>

By the time Zack had both himself and Cloud dried and dressed, Sephiroth had already started a small fire and was cooking the rabbits. He was clad in his old black coat and Masamune lay at his side, gleaming in the grass.

"So they kept all your stuff, too?" Zack asked as he stepped closer, Cloud held over his shoulder. His free hand kept twitching, eager to feel the weight of the Buster Weapon currently strapped out of the way on his back. He paused just out of the Masamune's considerable reach.

Sephiroth turned cool, feline eyes toward them, gaze flicking over the both of them briefly - pausing on Zack's throat. "So it seems. I had no idea if anything important of Clo- Strife's was there. I hoped the clothes would be enough."

He was looking at the face Sephiroth had presented them just before he'd left the lab - closed, expressionless. Distant. Not crazy, thank Shiva, but sometimes it felt like this wasn't a huge improvement.

"I'm sure he'd thank you if he could," Zack replied. His stomach rumbled audibly at the smell of the meat beginning to cook.

Sephiroth lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug, said nothing. He turned back to the fire but, to Zack at least, it seemed that his gaze lingered for a second on Cloud before he did so.

Zack felt his fingers tighten around Cloud's thigh. _"No_,_"_ he could hear Sephiroth's broken moan in his head, grieving over Cloud's broken body, _"No, he's dead, he's dead."_ He had to shake his head before it would stop. Taking a breath, he stepped closer to the fire and sat down.

Though he didn't show it, Zack had no doubt that Sephiroth noted the way he kept the fire between them, settling on the opposite side of it to the older man, and that he sat Cloud down so close he was almost in Zack's lap. Cloud slumped with his shoulder pressed to his, head lolling forward. Zack found the warmth of the other man down his side comforting.

Sephiroth simply watched them over the fire. Over the flames his face seemed very thin and angular - had he always been quite so slim? Zack couldn't even remember anymore - his jawline and his cheekbones clearly defined. His lips were rough and cracked. He had dark hollows around his eyes that matched the bruises smudged beneath Cloud and Zack's.

He looked haggard, and yet he'd spent the night clearing their way out, getting them clean clothes, and hunting down food. Zack wished that was enough to chase away the doubt lingering in his mind. As it was, all it did was make his heart twist in his chest.

It was Sephiroth who broke the silence. "So," he said, leather creaking as he sat back slightly, "what exactly are we going to do next?"

If only Zack knew. The problem was, really, that they had so _many _problems that it was impossible to know where to start.

* * *

><p>2.6<p>

In the short term, at least, they had no real choice other than to head south. Traversing the mountains to the east was impossible, and taking the dangerous northern pass would mean having to go back through Nibelheim. To the west lay the sea, and Wutai, and Zack wasn't in the mood for a swim.

So they walked. They walked until the green plains faded into red rocks and dust, Cloud draped over Zack's back piggy-back-style. Sephiroth followed, but he always kept himself at a conspicuous distance, trailing after them like some great shadow. It felt like having a wary panther padding behind him the whole time.

It wasn't long before Sephiroth announced, "I'm going to go and scout around," and disappeared off again.

Zack sighed, rubbing his cheek against Cloud's temple where the blond's head was resting on his shoulder. "Oh, boy," he said. "What are we going to do about him, hey?"

Cloud didn't reply. His eyes were closed, mouth slack.

"I don't know, either," Zack said. He squinted up at the sky - it was beginning to grow dark. If they were lucky they'd reach Cosmo Canyon around nightfall. "I bet you'd be better with him than me, though, you being sweet on him an' all." He grunted and hefted the other man higher up on his back. "And to be honest," he went on, "I think he's gone a bit sweet on you, too. Just don't tell him I said that, okay?"

If the last four years hadn't happened - if Sephiroth hadn't been pushed to breaking point, if they hadn't been locked in the laboratory beneath Nibelheim, if, if, if - then he knew that little bit of information might have been something to celebrate. The thawing of their stoic commander, Cloud's joy - he could imagine it all.

But the last four years _had_ happened. Now Cloud was almost half-dead, and Sephiroth was so fucked up in the head Zack still wasn't sure he'd made the right decision letting him out.

Having Sephiroth with them complicated everything. If it had just been himself and Cloud he would have known what to do - head straight for Midgar, where they had allies and a whole city to hide themselves away in. But Sephiroth was too recognisable, _especially_ in Midgar, and if he did lose it completely, then…well, Zack didn't even want to imagine the destruction he could wreak on an entire city.

"I should have left him behind," Zack murmured. "It's what any sane man would have done."

He felt Cloud's head move against his shoulder, forehead rubbing lethargically against rough cloth. It could have been any random movement - it wasn't necessarily a response to Zack's words, because only Shiva knew if the blond could even hear what he said, let alone understand any of it - but it made his throat grow thick anyway.

"I know," he said, "you wouldn't have let me leave him anyway. You're too nice. But you know what, Spike? You're not the only one of us who's ever been sweet on the General. Don't tell him I said that, either."

There was no response to that. He jostled Cloud gently on his back. "What, you're not gonna say anything to that? I just confessed my big secret," he said, keeping his voice bright. "No? Well, how 'bout this - did I ever tell you about this one mission I fucked up so badly they had to send Sephiroth out to clear up my mess? I haven't? You'll love this story…"

He managed to fill the silence through the twilight, until it grew dark and the lights of Cosmo Canyon came into view -

- where a Turk was waiting for them.

* * *

><p>End Chapter 2.<p>

A/N: Thanks for reading so far :) Any comments are always appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor am I making any profit from this fanwork.

* * *

><p>3. (Forward)<p>

3.1

The Turk had hidden themselves away near the winding stone steps that led up to Cosmo Canyon. They were almost perfectly invisible - but not quite perfectly enough. As Zack had been moving, he'd seen the reflection of the very last dying rays of sunlight off of the metal of their weapon. It looked like the barrel of a gun, but whether it shot bullets or tranquillisers he couldn't tell from this distance.

"Shit," Zack muttered, ducking out of sight. His breath came hard in his chest. "Shit, shit, shit."

At least he'd spotted the Turk before they'd spotted him.

(A Turk. _A goddamn Turk_.)

He carefully let Cloud down off of his back and sat the blond up against the dry, red-brown rocks surrounding them. He took a moment to calm himself, cupping Cloud's jaw in his palms and raising his drooping head up. Cloud stared fixedly at some point near Zack's chin. He looked very pale and fragile and his skin felt a little too warm against Zack's.

"What the hell are we gonna do now, eh?" he murmured to that vacant face. They'd been gone a day and Shinra had already shipped the Turks out after them.

Heading for a town at all had been risky but they needed supplies. He knew how to survive off of the land if need be but there were things he'd hoped to get that would make this whole journey a whole lot easier - potions, rations, even some materia if at all possible. They'd got their weapons back but their materia was long gone.

He stroked the pads of his thumbs over Cloud's hot, paper-white skin. "Sorry, Spike," he whispered. "Guess we'll just have to keep moving for now."

They'd have to backtrack to give Cosmo Canyon a wide-enough berth, too. Zack glanced around, searching for possible route away - somewhere they'd be well-concealed, because he could see well-enough in the dark for that not to be a problem - and once more his eye was caught by the dim glint of light off of metal nearby.

"Fuck," Zack hissed.

This time it was the Masamune that had caught his eye - leading up to Sephiroth's black figure, crouched on a high rise of rock nearby. His gaze was fixed unerringly on the Turk's position and even as Zack watched, Sephiroth seemed to hunker down lower, the muscles bunching in his thighs like a tiger on its haunches preparing to strike.

Even in the near-darkness he could see the way the man's expression was twisted, teeth bared.

"_Fuck_." With one last glance back at Cloud, he ran for Sephiroth. The rise wasn't that high for a SOLDIER like Zack, so with a grunt of effort he launched himself up. He caught the man just in time, and just right - Sephiroth was just making to leap off, but because he was concentrating on that he only saw Zack a second before the other man collided into his side, barrelling them both off of the rock.

They tumbled down to the ground below, Zack clamping his arms tightly about the other man's middle. They hit the ground with a thump. Sephiroth took the brunt of the impact with a hiss through his teeth, but instantly he was rolling Zack beneath him, Masamune swinging. Zack met it with the flat of the Buster Sword. He could only pray that the Turk wouldn't hear the noise.

Sephiroth snarled over him, eyes unnaturally bright - an unholy demon in the dark. "I'll kill you if you get in my way!" he growled.

"If you kill a Turk then we'll all be dead anyway, with the firepower Shinra would send after us," Zack hissed back. Sephiroth hadn't backed off with the Masamune and his arm was beginning to shake with the effort it took to hold the other man off.

"And if she follows us?" Sephiroth demanded. His voice was gravelly with anger. "I won't let her have what's mine!"

"'_Yours_'?" Zack echoed incredulously. His arm felt like one shuddering ache from wrist to shoulder. "You mean _us_? _Cloud_? You greedy son of a bitch - you want the _Planet_, you want _us_, and none of it's yours! We're human beings, we don't fucking belong to _you_!"

With a grunt, Zack shoved at the Masamune and Sephiroth allowed himself to be pushed back. "You're not even making sense anymore," he went on, holding the older man's heated gaze. "Do you even listen to yourself, Sephiroth? You want to kill the Turk to protect us, but you're willing to kill me if I interfere? What do you think that'll achieve?"

Sephiroth stood up, saying nothing. Zack staggered to his feet, staring at Sephiroth's back. He wondered if anything he'd said had made an impact.

When they'd first been captured, Sephiroth's madness had been a different kind of beast altogether. He'd been calm and detached from the world, a man convinced he understood things no human ever could - mankind had become nothing more than a huge joke to him. His response to most attempts at interaction, whether from Zack and Cloud or the scientists, had been mirth, like he was listening to monkeys mimicking human sounds. He'd trusted utterly that he would escape and he and his 'mother' would continue with their plans unhindered.

But he hadn't escaped. For a year he'd endured Hojo's constant experiments, and of the three of them Sephiroth's treatment had been the most tortuous, fuelled by Hojo's fury and vindictiveness. Zack had watched as Sephiroth's aloofness had been battered and dragged down by hatred and anger and pain, as the coolly amused smiles gave way to bared teeth and barely-restrained violence.

Was there any way back for a man who had been driven mad twice?

"I had to leave Cloud to come stop you," Zack said, when Sephiroth continued to just stand there. "You'd better pray to whatever God you believe in that he's still there, Sephiroth, or I will kill you."

The other man didn't respond. The tip of the Masamune had dropped until it was resting on the ground.

"_Sephiroth_," Zack hissed, and the older man turned his head. He had a strange, blank look on his face. An improvement but still not necessarily _good_. "We need to go make sure Cloud's okay," he went on, because he didn't know what else to say. "Are you coming?"

Cloud was right where they'd left him. The Turk, on the other hand, was not.

There wasn't a swearword strong enough for that. "We have to move," Zack said. "_Now_."

* * *

><p>3.2<p>

Zack had never gone on the run from the Turks before. It wasn't an experience he was going to recommend to anyone anytime soon.

They moved through the dark as quickly and silently as possible, trying to put as much distance between themselves and Cosmo Canyon as they could. Zack carried Cloud across his shoulder and was painfully aware that anyone shooting at him from behind would more likely hit Cloud in the back - or the head - than him. His heart seemed to shudder in his chest, fear gnawing at him and making his breath come short and sharp in his lungs.

Sephiroth, mercifully calmer than before, chose to stick close to them this time. Zack wondered if that was enough to scare off a trained assassin. The Turk must have known that Sephiroth might try to kill them, even if they didn't know that Zack was doing his best to discourage it.

What the Turk - and Sephiroth - also didn't know was that if they hurt Cloud, they wouldn't have to worry about SOLDIER's former General, because Zack would be the one tearing them apart. Let ShinRa gun them down. He wouldn't care anymore.

Eventually the red rocks faded back into lush grass plains beneath their feet. Somewhere towards the east lay the sporadic jungle of Zack's childhood. He thought briefly about heading to Gongaga, but if he did then he might very well lead ShinRa straight to his parents - if they hadn't been there already.

So many people's lives in his hands. They continued south instead.

Sometime later, after they'd been travelling for hours, Sephiroth said, "We should rest for a while."

Zack gave him a sharp look. "Is it safe?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "I do not believe we are being followed. We can afford a little time."

Zack would have liked to continue, but in the dark he saw for the first time that Sephiroth - unfailing, invincible Sephiroth - was flagging. Where he had looked merely tired before, now he looked exhausted. Had he slept at all since they'd broken out of the lab? Between that and his wildly swinging emotional state, it was no wonder he looked so drawn.

Zack bit his lip. So very many lives in his hands, and his hands alone. "Okay, but only for a few hours."

They settled in a copse not too far away, the only cover for miles around. They found a large, old tree whose trunk had been hollowed out at the base by some long-departed animal, big enough for the three of them if they didn't mind squeezing together a bit. Zack balked a bit at first, but as he watched Sephiroth crawl into the hollow and immediately curl up to sleep, he realised that this night, at least, the older man didn't have the energy to turn on them.

He lay Cloud down and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. The blond was shivering faintly, but when Zack brushed the back of his hand against the man's forehead, he felt hot.

He had no idea if this was normal for someone with Mako addiction, or if it was something else entirely. He doubted Sephiroth would know either.

"Don't give up on me," he murmured. He tangled the fingers of one hand with Cloud's and squeezed gently. "You're not allowed. What would I do without you?" Go as crazy as Sephiroth, probably.

Zack ran a hand through his hair and looked over at where Sephiroth lay, curled up on his side facing them, handsome face pensive even in sleep. Being on the run was doing none of them any good. They needed to find somewhere to settle for a while, where Cloud could rest and recover and they could try to piece back together Sephiroth's shattered mind. The only question was 'where?'

He squeezed Cloud's hand again, and very, very faintly, Cloud squeezed back.

* * *

><p>3.3<p>

There was no sign during the night that anyone had followed them to their hideout, so Zack let his companions sleep until dawn broke.

It was testament to Sephiroth's exhaustion that he didn't wake by himself as soon as the sun rose. He remembered from various missions together that the older man had always been up before Zack. It was strange now for their positions to be reversed.

Cloud he woke gently, stroking the man's face until his eyes fluttered open. The blond seemed to focus on Zack but there was no recognition in his blank, tired expression. His skin was even warmer than before.

"Morning, gorgeous," Zack told him, hoping that whatever awareness gazed out of him from Cloud's eyes didn't register how strained his smile was. "Let me just get Mr Grumpy up and we'll be on our way."

Sephiroth woke fairly easily when his name was called. Zack hadn't moved from Cloud's side to do it, muscles tense. He watched as Sephiroth's gaze flickered around the hollow for a moment before he sat up abruptly, almost hitting his head on the curve of the tree above him. There was a faint, telling frown-line between his eyebrows.

"We're in a tree," Zack told him. "Just in case you were wondering."

Sephiroth just looked at him.

"Do you remember?" Zack asked. "Do you remember the Turk?"

"What Tu-" Sephiroth began, but cut off suddenly. His eyes unfocused. Zack watched him warily, fingers curling into the material of Cloud's uniform at his shoulder.

"You remember now?"

The older man looked uneasy. "I remember, yes." The focus came back to his eyes and he looked Zack over critically. "Are you hurt?"

Zack fought not to look surprised at the question. It sounded deceptively normal, but what were the chances of Sephiroth being cured by a bit of rest, seriously? "From when you took a bit of an exception to me yesterday?" he asked. "Not really, no." His shoulder ached a little when he moved it the wrong way, but it would fade soon. His throat, so tender at first after Sephiroth's attack in Nibelheim, was already almost entirely healed.

Sephiroth's eyes flicked to Cloud's body where it was curled against Zack's side. "Did I hurt…?"

"No." _Like I'd let you_, Zack thought. "No, you didn't."

Sephiroth closed his eyes briefly, in what looked something like relief. It was the most…_human_ gesture that Zack had seen the man make since their escape.

Part of him wanted to just go with it, wanted to trust in that one small gesture, so very, _very_ badly. But the twinge of his still-healing bruises when he turned his head or moved his shoulder told reminded him how stupid that would be.

He'd have to worry about Sephiroth later. They needed to decide where to go, and what to do about Cloud. Cloud, and the unnatural heat of his skin that felt almost burned into Zack's fingertips.

* * *

><p>3.4<p>

There was, as Zack had suspected, perhaps only one option left open to them. "If we can find passage," Sephiroth said, "then the southern islands might be remote enough to disappear into. I understand that there are a lot of abandoned houses where people moved away onto the mainland to work. Perhaps we can find something still liveable there."

The islands were indeed remote - so much so that ShinRa had never bothered to build reactors there. They were also covered in jungle, if Zack remembered right, which was an environment he knew how to live in and would give them a small advantage over anyone sent after them.

But it was also the perfect place for ShinRa to get rid of them with minimal fuss, and the isolation would mean little access to doctors or hospitals if Cloud needed treatment.

However, with a destination in mind they travelled with more certainty than before. The promise of the distant sea pulled Zack onwards, just as the rising heat of Cloud's cheek against the bare skin of his neck spurred him from behind.

Zack led them on a somewhat meandering route, taking advantage of cover wherever they found it. ShinRa would not give up on them easily. If they had sent Turks, then they very much intended on capturing them, and Zack wasn't going to give them an easy ride if he could help it.

They stopped briefly after midday when they came across a stream and bushes laden with berries Zack knew well from his youth. "We can eat these," he told Sephiroth, who was already crouched down and cupping his hands in the clear water.

Zack stuffed his mouth quickly, savouring the sharp flavour greedily even if the berries weren't quite ripe enough to be sweet. It still tasted heavenly compared to the slop they'd been served in the mansion. Leaning forward slightly to make sure Cloud didn't slide off his back, he freed his hands to fill his pockets with more, then slid his palms back beneath Cloud's knees to make their way over to the stream.

Sephiroth was splashing his face as Zack settled close by, skin flushed from the sudden cold. His hair was scraped back, pale silver streaked with a darker steel-grey from the temples where he'd run wet hands through the thick mass, and somehow the sight choked all the breath in Zack's body.

He saw Sephiroth look at him out of the corner of his eye - probably noting the way Zack had paused - and it shook him from his short reverie. Sephiroth wasn't the kind of person to confront a man verbally, but the wary "What are you looking at?" was clear enough in his eyes.

"You look different with your hair back," Zack said, hoping to dispel the awkwardness. He squatted down not too far away and began to manoeuvre Cloud off of his back. It was a surprisingly delicate operation with the handfuls of berries in his pockets.

Sephiroth snorted. "You've seen Hojo near rip my limbs off, and _now _you say I look different?"

"It's the little things," Zack replied automatically. Sephiroth quirked his mouth briefly, apparently amused.

The exchange reminded him a lot of the Sephiroth he used to know. His clear-headedness from the morning seemed to be holding. It was something he hadn't seen once in the long years below the mansion in Nibelheim.

_You _are_ still in there_. The thought made Zack smile as he sat Cloud at his side, buoying him as he wet his hands and then ran them gently over the blond's heated cheeks and forehead.

Cloud stirred at the shock of cold. His head turned into Zack's hands and his lips parted, breathing a soft, "Aaah…"

Zack and Sephiroth shared a startled glance over Cloud's head. Then Zack burst into a wild grin, something very like elation bursting through him.

_And Sephiroth's not the only one!_

* * *

><p>3.5<p>

Zack began the afternoon leg of their journey with something of a bounce in his step. Cloud had drunk well from the stream and even accepted a few of the berries, and continued to move restlessly against Zack's back every so often as they soldiered on. He even seemed to press with a vague deliberateness against Zack's bare neck, seeking cooler skin against his feverish face.

"Some people would get ideas if they saw you nuzzling me like that," Zack commented. They were creeping through the outskirts of a wood, and Zack was amusing himself by only stepping on patches of ground splashed a warm gold by the afternoon sunlight falling between the trees. "And who could blame them? Good-looking guy like you, handsome rogue like me? We wouldn't exactly be the ugliest couple, would we!" He stopped briefly, gaze darting for the next likely patch of ground he could move to, but each was more than a comfortable step away. He gripped harder beneath Cloud's knees and made an awkward jump to the nearest patch. "There we go - now what was I saying? Oh yes. About the only we we could be a prettier couple is if one of us was Sephiroth." He turned his head to look over his shoulder. "Right, General?"

There was no-one there.

Zack straightened immediately, so fast he almost sent Cloud falling backwards. "Sephiroth?" he called. The wood was silent and still around them.

He refused to panic, though the first echoes of it were beginning to spread like ice through his veins anyway. Any number of things could have happened, he told himself. The man could have just been distracted. He could have gone off scouting again - could even have announced his departure but Zack, determinedly keeping up a constant one-sided conversation with his unconscious passenger, might not have heard him.

He could have been picked off by a Turk.

_Impossible_, Zack thought. The ice was crawling up his throat. _This is Sephiroth._

He thought of the incident at Cosmo Canyon, how easily he'd caught Sephiroth off-guard. Would he have ever been able to get that close to the man before this whole mess?

Carefully, quietly, Zack began to pick his way back the way they'd come. He strained his senses, but there was little that was enlightening. Even the near complete silence in the woods was probably nothing more than the animals' natural-born fear of three predators that stank of mako. Few animals besides trained chocobos could stand to be near SOLDIERs.

He didn't have to go far. Rounding a large tree trunk a hundred metres back, he spotted his quarry ducked down in the undergrowth, head cocked like he was listening for something. Sephiroth didn't acknowledge their presence at all, even as Zack drew near him.

He didn't say anything at first, only studied the older man's face from what he hoped was a safe distance. Sephiroth's eyes were focused, but on what Zack couldn't tell. His shoulders were tense beneath the metal guards. The only good sign was that Masamune was still safely sheathed.

Zack waited for several moments, listening along with Sephiroth, but neither heard nor saw anything suspicious. "Seph…" he began.

Sephiroth abruptly stood. Zack skittered back a couple of steps in surprise, but the other man continued to stare off into the distance, beyond the trees and out towards the open, empty plains.

"Is there something there?" Zack asked. He couldn't see anything.

"They're getting closer," Sephiroth said, and with no other warning began to stride off the way Zack had come.

Zack glanced once more out to the fields, then jogged after Sephiroth's retreating back.

* * *

><p>3.6<p>

Sephiroth grew increasingly restless and tense as the afternoon wore on and the sun began to dip towards the horizon, the calm slipping from his eyes as rapidly as it had come. He bared his teeth at every sound, started at every movement, and by the time the light began to truly fail, he held Masamune unsheathed at his side.

Between that and the threat of a pursuing Turk, Zack's nerves were shot. Whether they were actually being followed or not, he had no idea, but he couldn't afford to take the chance that Sephiroth was wrong. So they pushed on well into the night, relying on adrenaline and the shared-out remnants of the bitter berries still remaining in Zack's pockets.

At some point - he didn't know exactly when - some blacker darkness began to loom up out of the night ahead of them. Sephiroth lifted his head like he'd caught a telling scent on the air, and they hadn't gone much further before Zack's lesser senses caught up; there were buildings, and the familiar smell of stables.

Chocobo stables.

"Jackpot," he whispered, heart lifting.

It was only a small holding. The stable was big enough to maybe house three or four animals, with a fenced paddock off to the side along with a small vegetable patch. As they drew nearer the rustling sound of movement came from the stable, the chocobos inside apparently aware of their presence. The house itself was tiny, and showed no signs of anyone being home at all.

It was like a dream. For a brief moment of doubt, Zack wondered if that wasn't really what it was.

He didn't have the time to think like that. He turned to where Sephiroth stood behind him - his green eyes were so bright in the dark they almost looked like a cat's reflecting the light - and said, "I need you to keep watch while we check out the house, okay?"

Sephiroth didn't seem to be paying attention; he was staring back at the fields the way they'd come. However, after a moment he gave a distracted nod, which Zack could only assume was directed at himself. He gave the older man one last dubious look before turning back to the house.

The front door gave under a short, sharp kick. The inside was just as cramped as it looked from the outside, consisting of a combined kitchen and living area, and a separate bedroom. He sat Cloud down gently in the comfy-looking armchair tucked away in the corner.

Sat up like that, the blond almost looked normal, like he'd merely fallen asleep that way. Zack couldn't help leaning forward to brush the backs of his fingers along Cloud's cheek, following the hollow almost down to his lips. Cloud's breath was warm against his knuckles.

Zack bit his lip and drew back. _Forward,_ he told himself. _Keep going forward._ _Don't stop, or you'll lose it._

He had to take a deep breath before he could turn away and get to work.

He had never been the type to steal, even in the brief period during his teenage years that he'd gone a bit wild and caused his parents no end of grief, and it didn't sit well with him now. The fact that he had no other choice if he wanted them all to survive was cold comfort. "Sorry," he apologised to the absent residents, as he piled up his finds on the middle of a table cloth: some bread, hard cheese, dried meat, a few gil he'd found tucked away in a rolled-up sock, two blankets and, best of all, a Cure materia.

"Sorry," he said, feeling his eyes begin to prickle as he held the warm, green sphere in his palm, thinking of Cloud. Thinking of Sephiroth. "But thank you."

Sephiroth hadn't moved from where Zack had left him. He eyed the wrapped bundle in Zack's hand but said nothing.

"Supplies," Zack told him. "And now for some chocobos."

There were three full-grown birds in the stable, and they only made the slightest of fuss as the three strange men entered the building. One, a male whose curiosity apparently overwhelmed any fear, stuck his head over his stall door to greet them, trilling inquisitively at them.

Zack reached up and scratched beneath the bird's chin. It warbled happily at him, leaning into his hand.

"Thank you," he whispered again, not even sure who he was speaking to.

They tacked up two birds and within ten minutes stole out into the night. The only sign of their passing the plaintive wailing of the one chocobo they'd left behind, distressed at being left alone.

The chocobo was still wailing the next morning, when a ShinRa helicopter landed not half a mile away.

* * *

><p>End Chapter 3.<p>

A/N: Thanks for reading! All comments are appreciated :)


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